Beating the TSX sounds simple until the index starts acting annoyingly competent. Canadian stocks have not exactly been asleep after all. The S&P/TSX Composite was up over 10% year to date as of writing, helped by strength in materials, energy, and financials. So any stock trying to beat the index from here needs more than a nice dividend and a hopeful shrug.
Energy stocks can still do it, but the setup looks messy. The International Energy Agency expects global oil demand to fall by 1.1 million barrels per day (boe/d) in 2026, while global supply is also expected to decline before rebounding in 2027. That means investors face a strange mix of weaker demand, tighter supply, geopolitical risk, and price swings big enough to make everyone check oil futures before coffee.
That’s where three-year thinking helps. A dividend stock does not need oil to soar every month. It needs enough cash flow to pay investors, buy back shares, strengthen the balance sheet, and invest in assets that can keep producing. Suncor Energy (TSX:SU) checks many of those boxes.
SU
Suncor is one of Canada’s largest integrated energy companies. It produces oil from the oil sands, owns refining assets, and sells fuel through its retail network. That integrated model gives it more ways to make money than a pure producer. When crude prices move around, refining and retail can help soften the ride.
The latest results show why investors still care. In the first quarter of 2026, Suncor stock generated $2.9 billion in free funds flow, up from $1.9 billion a year earlier. Management says free funds flow measures the company’s capacity to increase shareholder returns and grow the business.
Suncor stock returned more than $1.5 billion to shareholders in the quarter, including dividends and buybacks. It also expects nearly $4 billion of share repurchases in 2026, more than 30% above 2025 levels. Fewer shares can make future per-share earnings and dividends more powerful, assuming the business keeps producing cash.
More to come
The dividend adds another layer. Suncor’s board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.60 per share for June 2026, and the current yield is around 2.9%. That is not a giant yield, but it comes with buyback support and room for growth if free cash flow holds up. In fact, even $20,000 can bring in ample income.
The three-year catalyst is Suncor’s own improvement plan. At its March 2026 Investor Day, the company targeted a $2 billion increase in normalized free funds flow by 2028, a US$5-per-barrel reduction in its corporate WTI breakeven to US$38 per barrel, and 100,000 barrels per day of upstream production growth by 2028.
That gives investors a real path to TSX-beating returns. If Suncor stock can lower its breakeven, grow production, keep refining assets running well, and buy back shares while the market still doubts energy, the stock could outperform over the next three years.
Foolish takeaway
The valuation does not look wild either. Suncor stock trades at about 15.7 times trailing earnings. Investors are not paying tech-stock prices for this cash-flow machine, which is good, because oil companies should not be priced like cloud software with hard hats. The risk is obvious. Suncor stock still depends on oil prices, refining margins, project execution, and politics. A deep oil downturn could hit cash flow quickly. Emissions rules, carbon policy, and investor pressure around oil sands exposure could also weigh on the stock.
So, could Suncor stock beat the TSX over the next three years? Yes, but not because it’s a sleepy dividend giant. It would need to keep converting operations into cash, then keep handing that cash back through dividends and buybacks.
For investors who can handle energy volatility, Suncor stock still has the ingredients to beat the market. The next three years will test whether management can turn those ingredients into something worth holding through the cycle.
